Welcome Back!
Jan. 17th, 2008 12:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fairyd123Hey kids! You miss me?
We sure as hell did Jack!
So after a painful year of being absent from our tv screens Torchwood was finally back - and back with a vengeance it was too! Having now watched it twice (I'll just take a moment to worship my shiny new Humax ptv recorder) its great to be able to say that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was Torchwood finally living up to its potential.
It was the perfect re-introduction to the series. Slick, peppered with clever one liners (I worked my way up the ranks. And I'm sure the ranks were grateful ), populated with feisty, likeable (praise be!) characters, a proper nasty villain, fantastic action sequences and the whole thing moved so fast you barely had time to draw breath, never mind worry about the plot. Even the music was amazing with its Western style licks. Has Chris Chibnall finally learned how to write?
The majority of the key gripes about the first series seemed to have been addressed. Jack - too often a bit part player in his own series during the first season was precisely where he should be in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - front and centre. Gone was the Angel lite brooding and angst which had reached the level of self-parody by the end of the series. Replaced with a funny, lighter but still wonderfully layered character.
The team who in the previous series always acted like they might kill each other should they get stuck in a lift together for 5 minutes were finally looking and acting like a proper team - a team who like and care for each other and woe betide anyone who gets in their way. I really loved the little sequence of Jack watching them all work together like a well oiled machine at the beginning of the episode. Clearly Jack's absence caused them to bond and all the pettiness and hatred seems to have fallen away.
I have to say I was very impressed with James Marsters as Captain John. Granted he was just playing Spike (as I guess I knew he would be) although a more x-rated HBO version of Spike but I still thought he did it exceptionally well. The character may have been completely amoral and fairly repugnant but he was also genuinely funny and very charismatic. I thought he had fantastic chemistry with John Barrowman - which surprised me as that hadn't come across at all in the shortened version of the kiss which the BBC had released prior to the episode airing. Out of context the kiss looked rather awkward but within the episode it worked really well. I thought Marsters really really sold the concept of Hart as a man who was in his own way still very much in love with Jack. Jack is fairly dismissive of their relationship so you see it through Hart's eyes - and you never believe for a second that it was only a fling. They were together for 5 years and what they had was important enough to Hart that he's desperate to re-kindle it. I thought his line delivery of He won't stay with you. We had something special was quite heartbreaking in its conviction that Jack will choose him over his team. The look of horror and regret after he'd pushed Jack off the roof was also brilliantly done.
But given that all the pre-publicity was James, James, James I was delighted that all of Team Torchwood got a chance to shine.
I love Burn Gorman but I found Owen to be so unlikeable and unstable at the end of the last series that he was getting difficult to watch. But this was a much more grown up Owen. I adored his action sequence at the beginning (the line about any children up at midnight and out on the roads getting what they deserved was my favourite of the episode) and his bickering interactions with the team were funny and sharp without being barbed. And the part where he threatened Hart if he touched Tosh again - I got goosebumps! Its funny how when they stopped pretending that Owen is a sex god and having women fall at his feet and just let Owen be funny and commanding and resourceful he suddenly became about a 1000 times more attractive!
Tosh - oh how I love Tosh. She's very much a woman coming in to her own. She's grown in confidence enough that she can joke about how hot Captain Hart is, flirt with him and blush adorably when he praises her skills which is why it was so horrifying when he turned on her and smacked her in the face. But oh Tosh honey - the unrequited love for Owen is not healthy. My heart was bleeding for her as she perked up at the prospect of being the kind of girl that Owen would have something in common with.
And astonishingly I didn't hate Gwen - Gwen as part of the Torchwood team is perfectly palatable and Eve does have great comic timing - her bit about Rhys not being able to go down on one knee to propose as his back gave out was lovely.
Ianto - well he's very Gareth this year isn't he? I've heard that bellowed "Hello" that he gave to Gwen at the beginning of the episode a fair few times. That was pure Gareth - not so much Ianto. They've obviously decided this year that they're going to capitalise on Gareth's impeccable comic timing and his very dry sense of humour. I did think he managed to steal pretty much every scene he was in and with very few words so I'm very encouraged by that. Also he did look like quite the hard man when he refused to back down to Hart in the lift and the following sequence was quite an erotic little scene I thought - with Hart suggestively stroking his gun over poor Ianto's face.
And they've finally given John some lovely stuff to work with. His acting last year varied wildly from wonderful (Captain Jack Harkness, Out of Time) to just plain horribly embarrassing (pretty much the last 20 minutes of Countrycide) but given great material he's brilliant. It would have been easy for him to simply decide to now play Jack as he did in Doctor Who - light, breezy and a tad shallow, but instead he managed to capture the light heartedness of Who Jack whilst still making it clear that he's a very different person to who he was when he was with the Doctor. Torchwood series 2 Jack is much more fun to be around but you can still tell that he's been through some very painful experiences. My heart broke for Jack when he was telling Gwen about being dragged back to life over and over again against his will - the broken glass metaphor was quite upsetting.
And of course I was delighted to see my favourite pairing alive and well! I giggled at the "I came back for you lengthy beat All of You" line because I swear I must have read it in a million fan fics since End of Days. I was quite worried that they were just going to pretend that the relationship never occurred so it was lovely to see that so much of the episode was devoted to that not being the case. You've got Ianto being instantly jealous of Hart, out right asking Jack whether he's going back to his Doctor and wanting to know why Jack is helping his ex-lover. Jack spends a fair amount of the episode re-assuring Ianto that he's here to stay.
I thought the scene in the office was lovely. You've got a pissy, jealous Ianto, still upset over being abandoned for the Doctor and distressed that Jack has barely been back 5 minutes and they've dropped everything to help Jack's old lover, acting all super, let's just focus on the work, professional. And meanwhile Jack is completely thrown at his some-time lover now refusing to call him anything other than Sir and not responding to him on a personal level. We've never seen Jack so unsure, so vulnerable. He was really nervous asking Ianto out and Ianto himself was emotionally all over the place, awkwardly accepting the invitation. It was a lovely bit of acting from both of them and gave me a lot of hope for how the relationship will be handled throughout the series.
It wasn't all brilliant - Torchwood are still endearingly useless. Jack must have known that Hart was lying through his teeth and yet he endangered his team anyway on the 1 in a million chance that he was telling the truth. He never should have let Gwen go with Hart and he should have worked out that Hart would be able to shut down their comm system. Gwen in turn probably shouldn't have let her guard down so completely with a man she knows is a murderer by practically turning her back on him to answer a phone call (and what happened to the ever present blue tooth attachments they all had last year - they seem to have gone low tech) And did it not dawn on any of them that a man with less than 10 minutes to live moght resort to violence to encourage you to help him with his little problem?
I was also a little confused as to why the fish had the pyramid. Chibnall's scripts are renowned for their gaping plot holes and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was no exception. Was the fish Hart's partner in crime? Did he steal the pyramid from Hart? Did he send the fish through the rift to retrieve the pyramid? A throwaway line in the script would have helped solve that mystery.
I guess any discussion of Saxon, Jack's year of hell, the Himalayas etc is going to be relegated to the website or fanfic. I would have liked it touched on in a little more detail but I don;t see it happening - even in the Martha episodes.
Also I confess my joy was slightly tarnished by the fact that they haven't entirely rectified my biggest problem with the series. Why does it have to be All. About. Gwen?
Why was Gwen in charge of the team when Jack was gone? Owen is second in command. Why did the new girl get to take charge? And Gwen is the one who was paralysed by the toxin. And Gwen was the one who gets handcuffed to Hart. Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. And don't get me started on the Jack/Gwen scene with Jack being dismayed about Gwen being engaged. It looks like the writers haven't stopped flogging that dead horse yet (and John and Eve still have no chemistry). The scene wasn't entirely helped by Eve's decision to play the whole thing with huge bug eyes - which was a little strange to say the least.
I didn't hate Gwen in this but the sense that Torchwood is a show about Gwen Cooper and the team hasn't quite gone away.
Still. I'm now very excited for the rest of the series and I can't wait for all the John/Jack/Ianto fic to start appearing.
Welcome Back Torchwood!
We sure as hell did Jack!
So after a painful year of being absent from our tv screens Torchwood was finally back - and back with a vengeance it was too! Having now watched it twice (I'll just take a moment to worship my shiny new Humax ptv recorder) its great to be able to say that Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was Torchwood finally living up to its potential.
It was the perfect re-introduction to the series. Slick, peppered with clever one liners (I worked my way up the ranks. And I'm sure the ranks were grateful ), populated with feisty, likeable (praise be!) characters, a proper nasty villain, fantastic action sequences and the whole thing moved so fast you barely had time to draw breath, never mind worry about the plot. Even the music was amazing with its Western style licks. Has Chris Chibnall finally learned how to write?
The majority of the key gripes about the first series seemed to have been addressed. Jack - too often a bit part player in his own series during the first season was precisely where he should be in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang - front and centre. Gone was the Angel lite brooding and angst which had reached the level of self-parody by the end of the series. Replaced with a funny, lighter but still wonderfully layered character.
The team who in the previous series always acted like they might kill each other should they get stuck in a lift together for 5 minutes were finally looking and acting like a proper team - a team who like and care for each other and woe betide anyone who gets in their way. I really loved the little sequence of Jack watching them all work together like a well oiled machine at the beginning of the episode. Clearly Jack's absence caused them to bond and all the pettiness and hatred seems to have fallen away.
I have to say I was very impressed with James Marsters as Captain John. Granted he was just playing Spike (as I guess I knew he would be) although a more x-rated HBO version of Spike but I still thought he did it exceptionally well. The character may have been completely amoral and fairly repugnant but he was also genuinely funny and very charismatic. I thought he had fantastic chemistry with John Barrowman - which surprised me as that hadn't come across at all in the shortened version of the kiss which the BBC had released prior to the episode airing. Out of context the kiss looked rather awkward but within the episode it worked really well. I thought Marsters really really sold the concept of Hart as a man who was in his own way still very much in love with Jack. Jack is fairly dismissive of their relationship so you see it through Hart's eyes - and you never believe for a second that it was only a fling. They were together for 5 years and what they had was important enough to Hart that he's desperate to re-kindle it. I thought his line delivery of He won't stay with you. We had something special was quite heartbreaking in its conviction that Jack will choose him over his team. The look of horror and regret after he'd pushed Jack off the roof was also brilliantly done.
But given that all the pre-publicity was James, James, James I was delighted that all of Team Torchwood got a chance to shine.
I love Burn Gorman but I found Owen to be so unlikeable and unstable at the end of the last series that he was getting difficult to watch. But this was a much more grown up Owen. I adored his action sequence at the beginning (the line about any children up at midnight and out on the roads getting what they deserved was my favourite of the episode) and his bickering interactions with the team were funny and sharp without being barbed. And the part where he threatened Hart if he touched Tosh again - I got goosebumps! Its funny how when they stopped pretending that Owen is a sex god and having women fall at his feet and just let Owen be funny and commanding and resourceful he suddenly became about a 1000 times more attractive!
Tosh - oh how I love Tosh. She's very much a woman coming in to her own. She's grown in confidence enough that she can joke about how hot Captain Hart is, flirt with him and blush adorably when he praises her skills which is why it was so horrifying when he turned on her and smacked her in the face. But oh Tosh honey - the unrequited love for Owen is not healthy. My heart was bleeding for her as she perked up at the prospect of being the kind of girl that Owen would have something in common with.
And astonishingly I didn't hate Gwen - Gwen as part of the Torchwood team is perfectly palatable and Eve does have great comic timing - her bit about Rhys not being able to go down on one knee to propose as his back gave out was lovely.
Ianto - well he's very Gareth this year isn't he? I've heard that bellowed "Hello" that he gave to Gwen at the beginning of the episode a fair few times. That was pure Gareth - not so much Ianto. They've obviously decided this year that they're going to capitalise on Gareth's impeccable comic timing and his very dry sense of humour. I did think he managed to steal pretty much every scene he was in and with very few words so I'm very encouraged by that. Also he did look like quite the hard man when he refused to back down to Hart in the lift and the following sequence was quite an erotic little scene I thought - with Hart suggestively stroking his gun over poor Ianto's face.
And they've finally given John some lovely stuff to work with. His acting last year varied wildly from wonderful (Captain Jack Harkness, Out of Time) to just plain horribly embarrassing (pretty much the last 20 minutes of Countrycide) but given great material he's brilliant. It would have been easy for him to simply decide to now play Jack as he did in Doctor Who - light, breezy and a tad shallow, but instead he managed to capture the light heartedness of Who Jack whilst still making it clear that he's a very different person to who he was when he was with the Doctor. Torchwood series 2 Jack is much more fun to be around but you can still tell that he's been through some very painful experiences. My heart broke for Jack when he was telling Gwen about being dragged back to life over and over again against his will - the broken glass metaphor was quite upsetting.
And of course I was delighted to see my favourite pairing alive and well! I giggled at the "I came back for you lengthy beat All of You" line because I swear I must have read it in a million fan fics since End of Days. I was quite worried that they were just going to pretend that the relationship never occurred so it was lovely to see that so much of the episode was devoted to that not being the case. You've got Ianto being instantly jealous of Hart, out right asking Jack whether he's going back to his Doctor and wanting to know why Jack is helping his ex-lover. Jack spends a fair amount of the episode re-assuring Ianto that he's here to stay.
I thought the scene in the office was lovely. You've got a pissy, jealous Ianto, still upset over being abandoned for the Doctor and distressed that Jack has barely been back 5 minutes and they've dropped everything to help Jack's old lover, acting all super, let's just focus on the work, professional. And meanwhile Jack is completely thrown at his some-time lover now refusing to call him anything other than Sir and not responding to him on a personal level. We've never seen Jack so unsure, so vulnerable. He was really nervous asking Ianto out and Ianto himself was emotionally all over the place, awkwardly accepting the invitation. It was a lovely bit of acting from both of them and gave me a lot of hope for how the relationship will be handled throughout the series.
It wasn't all brilliant - Torchwood are still endearingly useless. Jack must have known that Hart was lying through his teeth and yet he endangered his team anyway on the 1 in a million chance that he was telling the truth. He never should have let Gwen go with Hart and he should have worked out that Hart would be able to shut down their comm system. Gwen in turn probably shouldn't have let her guard down so completely with a man she knows is a murderer by practically turning her back on him to answer a phone call (and what happened to the ever present blue tooth attachments they all had last year - they seem to have gone low tech) And did it not dawn on any of them that a man with less than 10 minutes to live moght resort to violence to encourage you to help him with his little problem?
I was also a little confused as to why the fish had the pyramid. Chibnall's scripts are renowned for their gaping plot holes and Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was no exception. Was the fish Hart's partner in crime? Did he steal the pyramid from Hart? Did he send the fish through the rift to retrieve the pyramid? A throwaway line in the script would have helped solve that mystery.
I guess any discussion of Saxon, Jack's year of hell, the Himalayas etc is going to be relegated to the website or fanfic. I would have liked it touched on in a little more detail but I don;t see it happening - even in the Martha episodes.
Also I confess my joy was slightly tarnished by the fact that they haven't entirely rectified my biggest problem with the series. Why does it have to be All. About. Gwen?
Why was Gwen in charge of the team when Jack was gone? Owen is second in command. Why did the new girl get to take charge? And Gwen is the one who was paralysed by the toxin. And Gwen was the one who gets handcuffed to Hart. Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. And don't get me started on the Jack/Gwen scene with Jack being dismayed about Gwen being engaged. It looks like the writers haven't stopped flogging that dead horse yet (and John and Eve still have no chemistry). The scene wasn't entirely helped by Eve's decision to play the whole thing with huge bug eyes - which was a little strange to say the least.
I didn't hate Gwen in this but the sense that Torchwood is a show about Gwen Cooper and the team hasn't quite gone away.
Still. I'm now very excited for the rest of the series and I can't wait for all the John/Jack/Ianto fic to start appearing.
Welcome Back Torchwood!
